Stagnant

Quite possibly a false perception on my part, but it is rather disconcerting to see progress in your peers while your own life spins in the mud, burrowing deeper into stagnant muck. I take very slight comfort in my age, thinking that the lower thirties aren't quite a lost cause, but nevertheless a call for concern. Looking into my bag of tricks isn't encouraging, there's really nothing beyond the usual card tricks or a string of multi-colored hankerchieves that most employers have not already seen done or done better, so I'm basically starting off at ground zero. I'm not better than a recent high school grad, except there will be this cavervous gap that I'll have to account for whereby my career stalled in the wrong lane, seemingly oblivious to the other open available lanes next to me. I can't help but be frustrated and guilt-ridden at my desire for more. It isn't more money, or a glorified position, but rather finding my place in this world doing something that I'm gifted at. My great hope is that November is a month of obligation, that even a shoddy first draft will be enough to warm my blood to yearn for more inspiration. I have to write to stay afloat from drowning in my pool of utter despair.

Writing Style

Been writing in a blogging conversational style now for so long I'm not entirely sure if I can write an actual story now, let alone a novel in one month. November isn't even here yet and I have tangible anxiety about the deadline, but I guess that's what National Novel Writing Month is all about. Self imposed pressure to put pen to paper. I had a couple ideas for outlines but really nothing concrete quite yet. I think the biggest obstacle right now is just starting. Deciding a tone, characters, and just trying to figure out which foot to start out with.

Short Fuse

Ok, it's not like I'm about to blow the gasket anytime soon, but the pressure gauge is needling in the red. There seems to be a lot of tension in me, from both the busyness of being a family man, and the inertia of being a man stuck in a job that's going round on a short track. So like the many promises that I make and break on a weekly basis, I thought blogging might spark the brain a bit, to keep it from gathering moss or rusting away.

It seems like I'm being over protective, but when I hear about some of the shennigans going on at the kids school, I can't help but want to intervene. Protecting them from life is impossible, I know, but I'm still going to voice my opinion about how they expect to be treated by their peers. Logan is chasing after Zoe and throwing pine cones at her? I'm about ready to confront them at the busstop and inform his parents that the next thing that is going to be thrown will be Logan if he doesn't knock it off. Having grown up and being picked on as a kid, that shit doesn't go over well with me. Until the kids grow up and develop their own crazy coping mechanism, I'm going to interfere because it is my business. I guess I'm old school like that.

Comtemplating getting a bigger vehicle now, since Daisy has to go everywhere with us because she can't be left home alone - see exhibit A, chewed up photo frame. The kids are getting slightly cramped back there as well, because their short little stumps are sprouting. So yeah, it's not like we are thinking of upgrading because of a dog, it's something that we've been ignoring for quite some time. When grandma goes anywhere, she's packed in there like a sardine withou seatbelts, which really ain't cool. But sad reality is that we don't have much capital, so even if we can put some money down and trade in my beloved Honda, we will probably be tied down to a loan with some horrible interest. So that idea might just have to chill for a little bit.

The short weekend

I look forward to my three day weekends because during my weekdays, the 40 hour workweek is compressed so tautly into my life that there's barely room enough for me to breathe. Friday had some overtime, so the week is shorter than usual and some bug is threatening to gain the upper hand over my body. Today is a little bit of a disaster, having to take Daisy to Bellingham because she's still too young to be home alone. She's going slightly bonkers, too many other animals to contend with. She's her own special brand of crazy right now.

Finished Season 2 of Californication and I have to give mad props, as the hipster palance goes, for being an enormously entertaining show. It features really good writing and it's got the kind of raunchy humor that makes my day, but is also quite smart. Season one is streaming on Netflix, and we just finished Season two on DVD.

September was a big bank bust, after the birthdays, the iPod, the PC replacement, the dog adoption... We should be eating top ramen for the rest of the year.  I was adding up Daisy's cost, and between the adoption fee, the vet, and the pet supplies, it's another huge expense.  I guess it's a good thing she's not stinky or anything... Oh wait. 

Since she was spayed a day before we picked her up, we're not supposed to give her a bath so that her stitches can heal properly.  So now she smells so much like a dog that we are smelling like a dog house.  Phew.  So, more air freshners and open windows for us.

This week has been a challenge, with dog training taking up most of our free time.  We can't really go on normal walkies yet because Daisy is so keen on chasing everything.  Has been feeling more than land skiing than anything, our shoulders slightly out of place from all that yanking.  That said, she had already learned to sit, shake, and lay down within a week.  So that's pretty good if you ask me.  Daisy has still got the cold, so she's hacking like a senior citizen who's been smoking all her life.  It's a little disconcerting waking up to that sound, halfway expecting a pool of vileness to follow the horrid sound.  But it hasn't happened yet, thankfully.  She's also a rather poor bedmate, sticking limbs in our backs and occupying open spaces with her body, disabling our ability to toss or turn.  This morning, after I took her potty at 6:30 am and failed to fall back asleep, she even decided to snuggle up with me by placing her head on my shoulder.  It would be tremendously endearing had not her doggie breath occupying every breath I drew.

But if it hasn't been evidently obvious, we are smitten with this terrier.  She has been...

Well, she just peed in the house.  Better go reclaim our scent back.  Grrr. 

We decided to head back to the Bellevue shelter regardless that we've been here the last two days and we looked at two different animals, Tina, a beagle mixed with terrier maybe, and Barney, a dashund.  Tina has a good personality, very playful, and a tad big for the kids when she's on her hind legs.  We were worried about that primarily, because the kids seemed to be frightened of her.  Barney was more easy going, but she was a Dashund and I guess I had some kind of biased, in that a pet should never, by default, look ridiculous.  No disportionate body parts for me, thank you very much.  

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I'm just gonna skip right ahead to the results, since I don't want to write as if it were just happening, since it has already been a day.  We ended up getting "Tina", the terrier even though the kids preferred the Dashund.  Tina actually scared the kids a little because on her hind legs, she posed a big licking threat.  Ultimately it came down to this, we needed a dog that would outlive the current novelty of having a small dog.  Right now a small dog is good, but when the kids are older, they would be stuck with a dog that can't run fast, jump much, and would be mortally wounded by a frisbee.  We needed a dog that the adults would like because it's not a kids plaything, it's a family pet that the parents would be primarily responsible for.  So we went for the terrier.  Shortly after we left the shelter with her, it was already decided that her name would be Daisy.  It didn't even take a few years, but later in the evening as the kids are running with the dog, I knew we had made the right choice.

Arf.

Sitting on a bench wondering if Leah is going to be the right dog for us. There is another couple currently checking out the dog and I imagine they would probably adopt her. We had a early candidate but since she was a pitbull mix, her criteria didn't quite fit ours so she was disqualified based on her breed, pretty much. So if Leah isn't available, we might just stop by another shelter and seeing what happens.

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Well, we met with Leah and she was a little big and a little too active for the kids. Alex was making excuses when he was clearly not comfortable when she was on him, licking his face off. Zoe did a lot worse, she was pawed and licked and she started crying. She was mostly just frightened because on her hind legs, the dog could take her down. We went to another shelter but they only had 4 dogs, no keepers there either. So we will just have to pass, might check back later in the week and see if we can find a suitable addition to the family.

Voluntary Layoff

Don't worry, this has nothing to do with me personally, just that it's a term that's floating around work with the contractors. First things first, it does suck for them. I don't disagree with that whatsoever, because some of them have been contractors for well over a year, and it sucks that there's no horizon to look forward to. The company can't hire because they are not seeing their own horizon very clearly themselves. However, with that said, some of the attitudes that I've been encountering has been aggravating me quite a bit evidently, because I kind of blew up at work during break at my co-workers.

I won't get into too much of the details, but basically these employed individuals want to be laid off so that they could collect unemployment, and then go to school. For someone who has always worked and schooled at the same time, it rankles me to no end because they are capable, human beings who basically want to be paid to go to school, under the impression that they have no other choice, that they cannot be employed otherwise.

I have benefited from public aid myself, having to be on WIC as well as using grants to finish college, and I know that there are millions who are unemployed, because of the depressed economy and the lack of open positions. But when someone tells me that they want to be "laid off" so that they can collect unemployment? That really bothers the hell out of me.

So I brought up that I'm a taxpayer, that old argument that always seems more self-serving and self-righteous than anything, but here's the bigger reason why I have a big chip on my shoulder about it. Never mind that unemployment wages are paid by taxpayer money. What about personal responsibility? What the hell happened to pride in yourself? Before public aid was available, and you didn't work, you just got kicked out and became a bum. You just suffered and had to struggle. Now evidently, you just have to march down to the unemployment office and make some life adjustments and still "get paid." Seriously, MAN UP. If you've got a family to support, WORK. If there was no economy and we had to depend on hunting and survival skills, and if you didn't go out there to hunt, you and your family dies from starvation. Shouldn't that same urgency and will to survive carry over to this industrialized nation? When you collect unemployment or abuse the system, don't you think it tips the balance of those who are willing to contribute to the public good and those who cannot because they are truly unable to?

I'm just getting mighty pissed at people who abuse the system to take advantage of Unemployment and Disability pay. I would love to sit around and bitch about how life isn't fair, or love to get something for nothing, but goddamnit I have pride in myself. My children look up to me, and I have to be able to stand by my words and actions. Anyone can cheat the system, get something for nothing, but at the end of the day, after I've woken up at 4:30 in the morning, going to a job I'm overqualified and underpaid for, and hoping that something better does come my way, I can still say that I'm a good man. That I earned every penny honestly. That in the end, I contribute to my community, to my society. I did my job, and it feels good to have done it.

Now I'm going to get off my soapbox. That I paid for with my own hard earned money.

New

There's been a lot of new things happening lately, I suppose that's just the evolution process in action, really. Just last week, I had a chance to show off some of my video editing skillz at work and it seems like even though I've been talking about my filmmaking degree, nothing really sinks in until they see some footage for a project we were working on all last week. Then it's like, wow, didn't know you could do that. Didn't know you had the talent. Anyway, not quite sure where any of this might go, but it's nice that I got some kudos for my project. It's one of these things that go under the radar for so long and then suddenly it seems like a brand new surprise.

Haven't spent a lot of time on the new PC, although I am using it right now to type this. Have been, in fact, spending most of my time playing with the iPod Touch, it is virtually a mobile Wifi device that continues to surprise and fascinate me. Usually I get something and there are degrees of excitement followed by a humble letdown, like the browser on the PSP, the game resolution on the DS, or the Nikon's level of difficulty. But the iPod Touch for the most part has delivered in its surprises and thrills. I've nothing but praise for this piece of metal and glass and a big fat brain. Interestingly, I've spend most of the time playing with the apps and discovering little things about it, and not really using it for its primary function much, which is to play music and podcasts. The week long project I was in didn't factor too much podcasting in, so I just had to play with it at home. But man, I'm just wowed by this gadget. I even took it out today, and while we were waiting for our food in the restaurant, I played Scrabble with my wife.

The PC has been doing pretty great, except I'm having a bit of trouble registering for my Windows 7, and so far I haven't had any real problems with it. I've gone a little open source with the Open Office and the Gimp, but other than that the PC hasn't had much installed in it. Welcome to the age of Google, I suppose. Everything can live in the cloud, and is likely safer up there.

Well, got dishes to tend to. Maybe more Spaced after this.

The Big Sigh

Well, the big week has come and gone, I've gone through the whole career mode of Rock Band Beatles, and now have to wait for the rest of the DLC to make my experience feel complete. The iPod touch is in the mail, or should I say, shipping from China, and should be here by next Wednesday or so. But somehow I'm still feeling a little jilted in a way.

The touch has been broken down by other websites and it seems to have been designed for a camera in mind, there's even a spot reserved for a camera. But for whatever reason they just left the damn thing out. But I got one before the blogs and websites started their chatter, and since there's no ETA on the camera equipped Touches, I just got one anyway.

My honeymoon with Apple got worse when my Mac Mini flipped me the proverbial bird and now is lagging like a mofo in molasses. It even failed to boot last night so I'm looking to the dark side today, shopping for PCs. The Mac mini has lasted me 3 plus years but the idea of putting a new hard drive into a machine that isn't even fast enough to run hulu or youtube seems ass backwards. So I'll have to check to see what's available for me.

The kids have accustomed themselves to school rather easily, and having them share their adventures and lessons from school makes me smile. They seem to be getting along just fine at school, and doesn't seem like being in the same class is a problem for them. They play separately if they want to, stick together if they need to.